NVIDIA has reportedly removed the driver-level code which restricts users from having an NVIDIA GeForce GPU process PhysX with an ATI Radeon GPU in the lead, processing graphics. Version 257.15 Beta of the GeForce drivers brought about this change. Possible commercial interests may have played NVIDIA's previous decision to prevent the use of GeForce GPUs to process PhysX with ATI Radeon GPUs, where users could buy an inexpensive GeForce GPU to go with a high-end DirectX 11 compliant Radeon GPU, thereby reducing NVIDIA's margins, though officially NVIDIA maintained that the restriction was in place to ensure Quality Assurance. The present move also seems to have commercial interests in mind, as NVIDIA could clear inventories of GeForce GPUs at least to users of ATI Radeon GPUs. NVIDIA replenished its high-end offering recently with the DirectX 11 compliant GeForce 400 series GPUs.

A lot of you have been asking about PhysX and the 257.15 beta driver we posted on Monday. First off it is true that PhysX is enabled when running on NVIDIA GPUs when AMD GPUs are used in the same system. PhysX is a compelling technology that makes PC games great – I am not surprised our fans are eager for it. When using this beta driver no additional hacks are required to enable PhysX. While it was not intentional, due to the overwhelming positive response to the beta driver we have decided to leave the beta up with support enabled.